How tempted we Christians are to seek spiritual experiences just for their own sake! This is all wrong. The Bible offers us no such truth as an individual thing apart from Christ. What God has done in His grace is to include us all in Christ. Then, in God dealing with Christ, God has dealt with us the Christians; that means in dealing with the head, He has dealt also with the body. In dealing with the Head of the body, He has dealt with all the members of the body. Therefore we are quite wrong to think we can possess anything of spiritual life in ourselves, individually apart from Christ.

Today in the Church as that body of Christ, it is exactly the same. God does not intend that we should acquire from Him something exclusively personal and individual. He is unwilling to effect anything like that in either you or me! There is so much counterfeit of spiritual gifts around today that, although spectacular and awesome, it is nevertheless false! All true Christian experience is first of all true in Christ alone, due to the personal achievement of God's only begotten Son whilst He was in the flesh on earth. What we then call 'our experience' is only 'our entering into that' which He has already previously achieved! We obtain, we do not achieve! It is the Vine that always determines the character of the branches and the kind of fruit they bear. The branches do not determine the character of the vine and the fruit does not determine the character of the branches or its quality - sour grapes can look just as good as sweet ones! Jesus is the real vine, we are His branches.